


Wildfire

by despommes



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-16 05:42:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/despommes/pseuds/despommes
Summary: He sees her first in the dungeons, unconscious and glistening with fever, pupils dilated to pinpricks and eyes glowing green with the fade, like the mark on her palm. A living, breathing testament of his weakness. His mistake. His failure.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this years ago. The new Dragon Age trailer made me remember it. I don't know if I'll keep writing this or if it will end up like all the other projects I started and never finished but here it is I guess.
> 
> Please remember to leave a comment with your feedback.

Solas wonders what the heavens must have crafted her from.

He sees her first in the dungeons, unconscious and glistening with fever, pupils dilated to pinpricks and eyes glowing green with the fade, like the mark on her palm. A living, breathing testament of his weakness. His mistake. His failure. He keeps her alive to the best of his ability, listens to her teeth chatter as she shivers, listens to her incoherent rambling in her strange sleep. She is a mystery to him. A riddle to be solved.

And then she wakes.

Her indignant snarls ring off the walls of the cells. She nearly kills a man, almost kicks his head from his shoulders before they can restrain her. She claws and gnashes her teeth all the while, lunging forward, eyes daring them all to come close enough for a bite. She is filthy from days of lying in her own sickness, hair limp around her shoulders. Dirt is streaked across her face, almost covering her _vallaslin_. She spits the word _shem_ at them. His nose wrinkles in disgust. She was another Dalish elf. No more than a beast of a child, lost in delusions of a past that wasn’t even hers. He wanted to be there when they questioned her, but it was not to be. He was needed elsewhere.

When he meets her on the battlefield, she nearly takes his nose off with an arrow. It whizzes past his face and buries itself into a shade’s eye with a hollow _thunk_. The creature shrieks and crumples, dissolving back into shadow. His head snaps back, and he really sees her for what he thinks is the first time. Her lank hair has been pulled back out of her dirty face, wrapped into a messy knot. Her nose is crinkled as she slams a boot down on a demon’s skull, anchoring it as she plucks her arrow from its gaping maw. Her eyes scrutinize the sharp tip, and she must deem it reusable because she slings it effortlessly into the quiver at her back.

He finally has a name to put to her face, the mean look in her eyes and the quirk to her thin mouth. _Sansa_. She doesn’t trust them, and it shows. She makes what he supposes is an attempt at civility. The laugh she draws from him when she asks if he and Varric are with the _chantry_ of all things is met with a confused stare, like she’s unsure if he’s mocking her or if there is a joke there she just isn’t picking up on. Something inside his chest shifts, like a pebble coming loose from the side of a cliff and tumbling down the rocks. He tells her his name, and she looks at his ears, and then to his bare face, and her head tilts. It dawns on him she is not looking at his lack of _vallaslin_ , but straight into his eyes. It makes him nervous.

When she stands atop the pride demon’s corpse and seals the rift at the base of the breach, he can’t help but stare. There is a blinding flash of green light, a gust of winds that kicks up ashes and leaves them all coughing and reaching up to protect their eyes. When he looks up again, she has fallen to her knees. She clutches at her marked hand and gives a choked cry before her eyes roll back in her head. She falls unconscious, and Solas finds himself rushing to her side, checks to make sure she still breathes.

He thinks then she must be made of steel. She must be, for no mortal creature of flesh and blood should have survived what she had; a magic so ancient and powerful it tore open the sky. But she yet drew breath, stubborn and resilient as the iron laced throughout the mountains.

 

* * *

 

 She wanders Haven like a sparrow locked in a cage.

She’d vehemently protested at any inclination that she was some sort of herald sent by the human chantry’s prophetess. Her denials fall on deaf ears, it seems, as the title is whispered in her wake everywhere she goes. She resents it, resents all of them, resents the mark on her hand and all the power that had come with it. She is civil for the majority of the time, but her eyes betray her mistrust and frustration. He finds her petulant and tedious to deal with, and he doesn’t hide his frustration with her. Their first few conversations are tense.

She spends hours in the woods that border Haven, watching the animals and collecting elfroot. He supposes it comforts her, though no matter how long she spends on the mountainside it never fully drowns out the sounds of swordplay and dogs barking near the settlement. Cassandra frets that she will slip away one day, through their fingers and out into the wilderness, never to be seen again. He himself is not completely sure she wouldn’t, but she returns every evening, pink-cheeked from the cold with her satchel full of herbs for the alchemist.

She doesn’t like him, but the loneliness weighs on her. He is the only other familiar elf in the encampment. His surprise is nearly palpable when one morning he sees her walking down the path to the corner of the courtyard he has claimed as his own. She begrudgingly approaches him, cloak clutched around her shoulders and the mass of her red hair blowing wild in the chill wind. He has been sketching, and her eyes fall to the picture of the breach that has taken up most of his morning.

“How can I help?” he asks at the same moment she opens her mouth to speak, and she closes it, startled. Her face reddens, whether from embarrassment or the cold he cannot say.

“You’re not dalish,” she declares. The lilt of her accent lingers bright in the crisp air.

“No,” he retorts.

“And you’re not from an alienage.”

“I am not.”

“Then were do you come from?”

Her question comes out snappish, whether she means it to or not. He tilts his head, the beginnings of a frown furrowing between his brows. “Why the sudden curiosity?”

“The only knowledge I have of elves outside of the dalish is that they live in alienages in the cities, or the elven mages taken to circles. If there are others I don’t know about then yes, I am curious.”

His jaw tightens with the clench of his teeth. He can’t tell if she notices; the scowl on her face could just be perpetual. “Surely there are other matters for you to attend to, besides questioning the apostate.”

She lets out an exasperated, heated sigh and her eyes roll in their sockets. “ _Fenhedis_ , stop talking to me like that!”

Solas blinks in the face of her outburst. “Like _what_?”

“Like I’m a stupid, bumbling child! I get it, all right? You don’t like the dalish, you don’t like _me_ because I’m dalish. And by now I’m used to it, believe me. Plenty of people have been more than happy enough to tell me how unfortunate it is their precious herald is a dalish savage.” By now her fists are balled in the wool of her cloak and her face is nearly as red as her hair. “But you don’t know a fucking _thing_ about me. Any of you. You know nothing of my clan, or the family I left behind. The entire life I left behind. I didn’t ask for any of this, so don’t you _dare_ talk down to me!”

And with that she stomps away, down to the humble cabin she’s been gifted as her own. Her speech has drawn the eyes of others in the tiny square, and they all look at him questioningly, wondering what prompted the episode. Calmly, he gathers his parchment and his pencils to take back inside, away from the noise of the settlement.

He finds her later that evening out by the fire, making her arrows. She uses a knife to shave down the feather fletchings, head bowed as she works. He approaches her side, hands clasped behind his back, and her head turns. She follows him with her sharp eyes, clearly still sore from that morning. He reaches the fire, stops. Watches the jumping flames. She goes back to her arrows as if trying to ignore him.

“When did you begin training with a bow?”

Her lips purse and her fingers still. She drops the arrow in a pile of other finished ones. For a few moments, she does not answer. He almost considers leaving rather than face the insult of being given a cold shoulder. When she does finally turn to him her expression is neutral.

“My seventh nameday.”

“So young?”

“Yes.” She picks up a whittled arrow shaft, starts binding the arrowhead to the tip with some sort of resin adhesive he doesn’t recognize. “My father insisted. He had our clan’s craftsman make a little bow, especially for me, and gave it to me for my nameday present. Started my training that afternoon.”

“Was he an archer, your father?”

“Aye, was. Lamed his shoulder when I was a babe, never fired another arrow.”

“Ah.” The bitterness in her voice paints a clearer picture for him. He watches her hands as she works. “Well, you’re clearly a competent archer, if what I saw at the breach is any indication.”

“Do you know why _I_ was chosen by our keeper to spy at the conclave, mage?” A poorly hidden smile quirks up one side of her mouth. She finally turns to face him, red curls spilling over her shoulder and golden green eyes glinting in the firelight. “Because I’m the best damn hunter clan Lavellan has seen for two generations.”

He eyes the bow etched into the vallaslin on her forehead and across her brows. “That sounds rather boastful.”

“Not boasting,” she mutters. “’S the truth. Ask any of the northern clans.”

“Perhaps I shall someday.”

“Good. Do that.” She throws another completed arrow in the pile. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Fairly sure that up to this point you’ve not given a nug’s ear what I have to say about anything.”

“You are interesting.”

“Sure, but usually when someone wants to apologize for being an ass they just say ‘sorry.’”

His mouth was open, a quick reply on his tongue, but it suddenly closed. He stares at her. The heart-shaped set of her face, the roundness of her cheeks. The peak to her nose. “I…”

She pats the spot next to her on the fireside bench, never looking up from her work. Cautiously, he steps closer and sits down, keeping a respectable distance between them. “You’re a fade expert?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Tell me about the fade then.”

He thinks then that she is made up of arrows, the same as those she crafts with her deft, taped fingers by the fire. Deceptively sharp and reaching, and they land like needles exactly where she wants them. It isn’t the first time he’s been wrong, and it most certainly won’t be the last.

 

* * *

 

Sansa refuses to wear the heavy boots distributed by the quartermaster. Instead, she demands they track down what remained of the clothes she’d been wearing before the explosion. Her breeches and tunic were burned beyond salvaging, but the hard leather wrist guards and matching archer’s gloves were still very much useable. What she is most excited to find, however, are the shoes. They are thin-soled and small, almost like slippers, except from toes to ankle lies an intricate web of lacing that pull them snug over the arch of her foot. She ties them off just under the knob of her ankle, over the strapped heel of her doeskin leggings.

“They’re made for mobility,” she explains to them in the Hinterlands. She throws the boots back into the stock pile with a curled lip. “Don’t know how you expect me to jump in _those_.”

She stretches her feet in them, planting her toes straight down and bending at the knee so the arch bows outward. A series of small cracks fill the air, and she gives a satisfied sigh. Varric makes a face.

“I’m sure you know what you’re talking about but don’t expect any of us to jump at the chance to carry you home when you twist your ankle.”

That makes Solas chuckle. She whips her head around to glare at them both like some slighted imp, making sure to let them know the jab was much unappreciated. That only serves to prolong the smile lingering on his lips.

They stop laughing though, after walking into a skirmish between factions of rebel mages and templars. She darts across the field of battle like a fox, arrows whizzing like lightning bolts between her fingers, her red braid trailing behind her. When it is over, she and Varric count up their separate kills, identifying them by their distinct arrows.

She wins by four.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t let it get to your head, spitfire,” the dwarf mutters in the face of her stuck-out tongue. She wrinkles her nose at the nickname. Solas had since learned that protesting the nicknames was a venture made in vain. She takes it in stride, turning her back on them to make for the Crossroads.

Sansa is chronically distrustful of humans, as had been apparent since she’d woken up in Haven’s dungeon. Their interference between the mages and templars at the Crossroads left her short of breath and streaked and blood. The talk with Mother Giselle put her in a sour mood. Despite all of this, she flits from refugee to refugee to offer aid. They were starving, cold, sick and scared. She promised them soldiers to protect them and whatever food and blankets she could procure.

“I am surprised,” Cassandra had said to her. Sansa regarded her only with a glance of her eyes. “I would not have guessed you would be so eager to help these people, given that most of them are humans.”

“I’ve seen plenty starve and die in the cold before. I’ll be glad to never see it again.”

And so they spend the better part of a week hunting rams and tracking down abandoned supply caches. Between the wandering rebel factions of mages and templars, the rifts split open throughout the countryside, and the mercenaries hidden away in the woods, it is not an easy job. Nevertheless, she seems more at peace in the wilderness here than she ever has at Haven. She stands taller, breathes easier. It makes him wonder what she had been like before, when she’d lived with her clan. Had she always been so severe? Or did she used to smile, laugh even? He briefly thinks about what her laugh would even sound like. It’s almost hard to imagine.

He ponders this one evening at camp. The two of them had gone hunting, a silent, stiff endeavor that rewarded them with three decent sized rabbits. Night had fallen as they returned to camp, so they sit at the fire to skin them for a stew. As the light from the jumping flames dances over her face, he can almost imagine what she would look like with her lips quirked up in a genuine smile. Lost in thought, he carelessly slips with his knife and slices the tip of his finger. She lifts her eyes at the sharp hiss he lets out.

“Cut yourself?” she murmurs, craning her neck to look.

“Yes,” he says tersely, and makes to get up.

“Let me.”

She stops him, her hand reaching out to take his wrist. Taking her waterskin from her belt, she rinses the cut clean. Then she pulls a small pouch from her pocket. With more gentleness than he’d previously thought her capable of, she gingerly applies a wet, earthy smelling poultice to the pad of his sliced finger.

“It’s just elfroot, embrium, and a little spring water.” Her hands are warm. “That needs to dry. I can finish up these on my own.”

“I… Thank you.”

“Mhmm.”

She turns her attention back to the rabbits. Careful not to disturb the still drying poultice, he stands to find the stew pot. He can feel Varric’s eyes on him from where he’d been sitting, cleaning his crossbow, Bianca. Doubtless he’d seen the whole exchange. Solas pretends not to feel the flush creeping up the back of his neck.

The walls she’d put up around herself to keep them out were slowly starting to thin. Perhaps, he thinks, she is much softer than she’d originally led him to think.

 

* * *

 

 He starts to think, at some point, that she might trust him.

She likes to listen to his stories of the Fade. She’s particularly fond of the ones about Arlathan and the ancient elves. In turn, she offers little glimpses of her own life. Her family back in the Free Marches.

“My cousin, Aria, is First to our Keeper,” she tells him one day, as they walk through the Haven commons. “She dedicates herself to these kinds of stories. I wish she could meet you. She’d love to hear about the crystal towers in Arlathan.”

“You two are close?” he asks.

“Very,” she murmurs. “Our mothers were sisters. Hers died when she was a babe and mine left me with my da not long after. Sometimes growing up, it felt like she was the only family I had. We were more like sisters.”

“It sounds as though she was a great comfort to you.”

“She was—is,” Sansa corrects herself. “I miss her. Dearly.”

“Do you write to her?”

“I did once, to let her know I was safe. It’s tricky though, finding out where they’re traveling. And with things the way they are in the Marches now, there’s a possibility another letter would never make it to her.”

“Ah.”

“Have you any family, Solas?”

He blinks, not prepared for the question. Sansa looks at him expectantly.

“No,” he answers. “None living.”

“Do you have a wife? Children?”

“I… no.” He was less prepared for that. “Difficult as it is to imagine, as a wandering elven apostate my prospects for marriage are rather bleak.”

She lifts a brow at that, lips quirking. “Fair enough.”

“And yourself?”

“Do I have a wife?”

“ _Are you married_?”

She huffs a laugh at her own joke and shakes her head. “No, despite my da’s best efforts. Never met a man brave enough. Not sure I ever will. ”

“That certainly would take no small amount of courage.”

Her eyes widen a bit. He can tell she is trying to hold back a smile but she’s doing a rather poor job of it. “Cheeky.”

“My apologies,” he offers, not sorry in the least.

She leaves him after that.

He spends the rest of the afternoon drawing the crystal towers of Arlathan as best he can from memory. It takes him three days to paint it in dreamy watercolors reminiscent of the Fade’s shimmering haze. The night he finishes it, he walks to her cabin, intent on nothing more than knocking on the door and handing it to her. As he approaches, the door opens. A young elven man tumbles out, shutting it swiftly behind him. Solas recognizes him; he was the blacksmith’s apprentice.

“Ah,” the boy breathes. “Good evening, ser. I was just, um…” His face is red, cheeks glowing in the lantern light. His hair is in disarray, and one of his boots is not totally on. “Assisting the Herald with her. Some schematics. From the blacksmith. So I’ll be going then!”

With that the boy darts past him. Solas blinks. He looks at the door to Sansa’s cabin, terrified she would open it and see him standing there. He quickly turns away, his ears burning. He feels like a complete fool.

He remembers that she is very, very lonely, and that she is made of flesh, not stone.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to keep writing this one! Hope you like this part. Also, if you want to see what Sansa looks like, [here](http://isaidyoulookshitty.tumblr.com/post/132633583909/behold-this-is-the-most-perfect-creature-i-have) are some screen caps.
> 
> Also, just a disclaimer, I don't know anything about archery.
> 
> Please remember to leave a comment with your feedback. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

The first few times she touches him there was always some degree of pain behind it.

When he’d cut himself in the Hinterlands, her reaction had been quick and effortless. She’d taken his hand in hers, all previous transgressions or mistrust forgotten in that moment. She had been concerned for him. The gentleness in her hands left a lasting impression on him.

The next time she touches him, she had tumbled out of the portal in the great hall of Redcliffe Castle. Her eyes are frantic as they sweep the room. He kneels to help her stand, but when she sees she reaches out and clutches his wrist.

“You’re alive,” she whispers lowly to him.

“I am.”

“By the gods, Solas.” She lays her hand gently over his jaw. He can feel her fingers trembling against his skin. He nearly ducks away from her in shock. “I-I saw you…”

“Herald!”

Cassandra pulls her up. Sansa lets go of him and turns to face Alexius. Later that evening, she’d insisted on setting up camp in the wilds far from the castle. He finds her that night, long after everyone else has gone to sleep.

“I saw… the future,” she tells him. She sits curled in front of the fire, arms wrapped around herself. She looks remarkably small. “A future where we failed. The Elder One, he—“

“Sansa.”

“You were all there. There was red lyrium everywhere, all over the castle. It was growing from the walls, from Fi—“ She shakes her head. “You all looked so _sick_. It was awful. An army of demons took the castle. The sky was…”

“Da’len, that future will not come to pass.”

The endearment leaves his lips before he realized. She locks eyes with him. He can see the firelight reflected in unshed tears there. “I watched you _die_ , Solas.” She rests her chin on her knees. “All of you. You threw yourselves at the demons to buy me some time.”

“And I would do it again,” he tells her. She sniffs quietly.

“I don’t want you to. I don’t want anyone else to die for me.” She stands and makes for her tent. “ _On nydha_ , Solas.”

The next time she reaches for him, she is dying.

The Frostbacks had tried to claim her, but she refused to be buried. He’d heard her screams over the wind, though they were nearly drowned out. They all leap from their makeshift camp to find her. Shouts of her name echoe over the mountains. The further he roams from camp, the more panicked he grows.

It seemed like they’d searched for an eternity before they find her. Near a tall cluster of snow-blown pines, a small, dark lump sits under their branches. He calls her name once, and seconds later he hears her.

“ _Help me_!” she shrieks, voice guttural and raw. He runs to her.

“Here!” he calls after himself. He waves his hand and sent a wisp overhead like a flare. He is answered with resounding yells, the sounds of boots crunching towards them in the snow. “Are you hurt?” Solas kneels before her. He holds her face in his hands, brushing her hair back to look at her. There is frost in her hair, stuck to her lashes. Her lips and chin are swathed with dried blood. The bridge of her nose is swollen and turning purple. “Sansa?”

“My wrist!” she sobs. His eyes drop to the arm she cradles close to her body. It was her hand marked with the anchor. “I think it’s broken. Dread wolf take me, I can’t shoot with a broken wrist.” Or seal rifts for that matter, he thinks.

“Anywhere else? Can you stand?”

“I… I don’t know.” She slumps forward. Her head falls to his shoulder. “I’m so tired, Solas, I don’t know. I can’t feel my feet.”

“You’re hypothermic.” He takes his cloak off, wraps it around her shoulders. “You _must_ stay awake. If you fall asleep you may not wake up.”

She doesn’t respond.

“Sansa.” He pulls her head up, pats at her cheek. She groans. Her eyelids slide closed. “Da’len, stay with me.” He presses his knuckles firmly into her sternum and slowly starts to rub small, hard circles against the bone. She gasps, eyes snapping open. “Have you hit your head?” he asks, eyeing her almost certainly broken nose.

“Can’t remember. I might have.”

“We need to get you warm.” Gingerly, he slings her uninjured arm over his shoulder. By now Leliana and Cullen have reached them. “Get a healer,” he tells them, and tries to stand with her. Sansa whimpers beside him, feet dragging in the snow.

He asks her questions to keep her alert. Her full name? Sansa Estella Lavellan. Her age? Twenty-five years. What did she eat for breakfast that morning? Dark bread and crispy bacon. Her words slur together the more she talks, and when finally gets her to a cot close to the fire she collapses. Mother Giselle begins work immediately, forcing warming potions past her lips. Solas turns to leave her to it, but he stops when trembling fingers grab for his hand.

“No,” Sansa whispers to him. “Stay. Please, lethallin.”

She’s frightened, and in pain. He’s never seen her so vulnerable. To his surprise, he finds himself reluctant to leave her. He sits beside her as the healers poke and prod her. They clean the blood from her face; a mage, fingers glowing with a healing spell, sets her broken nose back into place with a sharp _snap_. She lets out a gurgling cough, teeth stained pink. When Mother Giselle rolls her sleeve up over her injured wrist, Sansa visibly clenches her jaw. She squeezes his hand.

“Not broken,” Giselle assures her. “But very badly sprained. It will take time to heal.”

A sprained wrist, broken nose, a concussion, and the early stages of frostbite on her toes. The wrist is wrapped and she’s fitted with a sling. After one more elfroot potion, she’s left to rest. Her hand still clutches at his, even as she sleeps. He eyes the bruises spreading up over the bridge of her nose, staining her freckled face a mottled purple. It clouds her vallaslin in a dark, sick wash of color. He worries in that moment that she might be made of glass, and if she is shattered it will be entirely his fault.

 

* * *

 

 “Have you ever fired an arrow, Solas?”

He sighs.

The sprain in her wrist has left Sansa unable to use it for the next six weeks, arm bound to a sling. Restless and unable to help in the field or with Skyhold’s reconstruction, the newly titled Inquisitor has turned into nothing short of a pest. He knows for a fact that many other members of the Inquisition have had to chase her off. Scout Harding now stays clear of the courtyard, and Cassandra has taken to practicing her drills privately. He’d even heard tell of an incident with Leliana’s ravens that resulted in Sansa’s banishment from the rookery for the foreseeable future. He supposes it is his turn now.

“Yes,” he answers, not bothering to hide his exasperation with her incessant questions. She ducks into his view, braid hanging over her shoulder.

“Are you any good?”

Solas closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He closes the rather large tome he’d been reading. “No.”

“I can help with that.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“It’ll be fun!”

Solas turns away from her, reaching for another book. Determined not to be ignored, Sansa slides over to sit on his desk. She grabs to book up before he can get to it, hiding it behind her back.

“You’ve been in this room for _days_ , Solas. Come outside and enjoy the sunshine.”

“If I do this, will you allow me to return to my research?”

She smirks. “Aye, I might.”

That, he tells himself, is the reason he follows her to a secluded part of the training yard. The weather is brisk and sunny, with the wind swiftly whipping about them.

“How long since you held a bow?”

“Ages,” he answers, entirely deadpan.

“Suppose you must have been a young man then, eh?”

He glares at her. She laughs. With her good arm Sansa tosses him a standard issue shortbow. It had indeed been ages since he’d used a bow and admittedly, as she hands him an arrow, his mind draws a blank. The smooth curve of bow in his hand feels unfamiliar, if it had ever been before. Reluctantly, Solas clumsily nocks the arrow. A straw-filled target dummy sits several yards away. He takes a deep breath, aims, and determinedly pulls back on the bowstring, releasing.

The arrow wobbles out from between his fingers, bouncing to the ground.

“ _Fenhedis_ ,” he says under his breath.

“A practice one.” Sansa smiles encouragingly at him.

Again, he nocks an arrow, takes a breath. Releases. This time, he manages to fire it, though the wind buffets him slightly. The arrow barely arcs upwards before taking a nosedive into the dirt only a few feet forward. Solas shakes his head. He’s almost ashamed. One of the People, barely able to shoot an arrow.

“You’re holding your breath.”

Her hand briefly touches his shoulder. He reflexively turns his head.

“I… did not realize.”

“Nock it again.” He does. Her hand hovers near his forearm. “May I?” Solas nods. She gently straightens his elbow. “You tense up when you hold your breath. It affects your posture, your concentration, how steady your hands are.”

With quick, meaningful pressure, she adjusts the line of his shoulders, the curve of his spine. He can feel the gooseflesh rising under his clothes wherever she touches him. It does nothing to help even his breathing.

“Focus on your target.” He raises his head, staring straight ahead. Sansa uses two fingers to slowly tilt his chin up, elongating his neck. “The idea is for to keep stiff, straight lines throughout the body. Your neck and spine are one continuous support, your arms guidance for the arrow.”

Her hand comes around to rest on his belly, right at his core. Solas feels the tremor in his breathing; he wonders if she notices.

“Take a few breaths. Then on an exhale, follow through with the arrow and fire.”

He closes his eyes. The wind whispers around the two of them. It scales over the castle walls, rustling the trees in the courtyard. He breathes it in, feeling the air expand his lungs. The warmth from Sansa’s fingertips seeps under his skin like a brand, centering him. With one last exhale, he opens his eyes and lets the arrow loose.

The arrow whistles through space, embedding itself in the target with a hollow _thunk_. It’s far from the center ring, but the fact he’d managed to hit it at all was… satisfying.

“Well done,” Sansa laughs. He can feel a flush beginning to creep up behind his ears. A few curls have fallen loose from her braid, framing her face like flames jumping in the breeze. She smiles at him, the first genuine smile he thinks he’s seen from her. It makes her look young, and he has to remind himself that she is young. Achingly so. Young and so very mortal.

She is beautiful.

“You are an effective instructor,” he tells her, looking away.

“No accounting for natural talent.” Sansa steps back and places her hand on her hip. “We might make a proper hunter of you yet, Solas.”

“Certainly you do not lack for ambition.”

“Try again, yeah?” She steps back to give him some room to try on his own.

As he nocks the next arrow, the wind dances about them. It carries her laughter with it. He can almost imagine her as part of it, winding freely through space, as gentle as she is powerful.

 

* * *

 

 _You change everything_.

 _Sweet_ _talker._

He knows he is falling long before she kisses him. That’s not to say he savors it any less.

Her lips are dry and warm. He reaches for him so surely, as if she’s not even capable of second thoughts and he surprises himself with how desperately he reaches back.

The first kiss was soft, like an affectionate whisper. As if she was testing him. When she pulls away, she gifts him with the tenderest smile he’s ever witnessed. It knocks the wind out of him, and the only thing he is capable of in that moment is pulling her back in.

Her arms wind themselves around his neck. He holds her face in his hands and truly, thoroughly _kisses_ her. He opens his mouth to taste her and she makes the smallest, sweetest noise when she lets him in.

Through the kiss, through the warmth of her skin, through the stutter in his heartbeat, there is the stale and bitter note of dread. He should not have brought her here. He should not have kissed her. He should never have let himself get this close. This will only make everything more devastating in the long run, but when he looks in her eyes, all he sees is _home_.

She is home. She’s the sun, and the moon, and the ocean, and he is _drowning._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
>  _On nydha_ : Goodnight.
> 
> All elvhen language courtesy of [Project Elvhen: Expanding the Elvhen Language](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553883/chapters/7825850).


End file.
